Get travelling. Get reading. Get lost.

Category Archives: On the road

Evelyn’s voice was faltering a bit as she pulled herself back onto the cable car. It’s all that adrenalin, I thought, she must feel on top of the world.

Evelyn had just thrown herself 143 metres down towards a valley in the Costa Rican cloud forest attached only by a cord and some ropey looking ankle straps – the instructors had just fixed them with duct tape right in front of us. It was my turn next.

Swinging into San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital city, early on a Saturday evening, we chucked on the nearest things to posh frocks we had. We were eager to explore the cosmopolitan life on offer after three weeks of beautiful beaches and colonial cities.

Around 10pm we took a taxi out to Centro Commercial El Pueblo on recommendation from our tour leader. It’s a warren of bars and clubs at night, some linked together, some hidden round corners, some that you can’t get to without walking through another and out the other side. There was a small charge to get into some of them.

We chose our first stop for a drink, the promoters still shouting “free party” as we ducked inside. The music was a mix of hip hop, reggaeton and (showing my lack of music knowledge here) more dance music that sounded like pitbull that wasn’t. This bar was pretty dead. Don’t believe the guidebooks that tell you it gets going here earlier than other countries. Continue reading →

The man was chattering away to me in Spanish at the bus stop. Too bad I couldn’t understand a word of it. “Mas lento,” I pleaded but he wittered on. I resigned myself to nodding and laughing when his face erupted into a wide grin. Thinking about it, he was probably telling me that I was a silly girl for sitting out in the hot sun all morning, waiting for a bus that was never going to turn up.

I had a long list of stuff planned for my few days in Granada, Nicaragua. I even wandered down to a tourist office to book some of them. I got there, sat down in a wonderful rocking chair, took one look at the brochure folder and decided to forget the whole plan. Continue reading →

A single line of hikers trudged up the blackened earth in front of me. The ground shifted beneath me and suddenly I found myself three foot further down the volcano, Cerro Negro, than I had been before. The rocks and ash were burning to the touch. Maybe at the next break there might be some reprieve, I thought, maybe at the next stop there will be some shade.

There were people everywhere. Children playing with light up toys in the street, food vendors busy grilling in the square and lovers holding hands whilst they jumped over the huge hole left from the roadworks.

It was the first place we visited that was as bustling during the night time as it was during the day.

Arriving in the dark, it filled my heart to see the main square in front of the cathedral was humming with activity. Despite a 3am start, a days drive across Honduras and a long, sweaty wait at the border, I was itching to get out there and join them. Continue reading →